Rescued from the trunk of their captorsī car, Canadian-American family safe in Pakistan after 5 years held hostage(The Star Television)

12 october 2017 23:36:37

SMITHS FALLS, ONT.—Canadian Joshua Boyle, his American wife Caitlan Coleman and their children are finally free after five years held hostage in Afghanistan by the Taliban-linked Haqqani network.Boyle called his parents early Thursday morning to tell of their rescue. He also told his father that they’ve had a third baby in custody, a little girl who was born two months ago. “Josh said he was doing pretty well for someone who has spent the last five years in an underground prison,” Patrick Boyle told the Star early Thursday, about his conversation with his son. The young family is in Pakistan and plans were underway midday Thursday to fly them home. Boyle told his parents that he was in the trunk of the kidnappers’ car with his wife and children when Pakistani forces rescued them. He said his kidnappers were killed in a shoot out that left him with minor shrapnel wounds. The last words Boyle said he heard from the kidnappers were, “kill the hostages.” Other media reports have quoted Pakistani and American officials saying the captors fled on foot. They are reportedly traumatized by both the violence of the Thursday morning rescue and their long captivity, but healthy and recovering.The U.S. was prepared to transport the family home on a military flight. Boyle’s parents said he did not want to go to the American air base in Bagram, preferring instead to go to the Canadian High Commission in Islamabad and get on a flight with his family to Canada.“We had arrangements to transport them back to the United States, or to Canada, anywhere they wanted to go,” White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said in a news conference Thursday. “They’ve been essentially living in a hole for five years,” he said, adding that the family is receiving medical and psychological treatment. Boyle, 34, and Coleman, 31, were kidnapped by the Haqqani network in October 2012. Coleman was five-months pregnant at the ti ...